Day 38…The End

Today is not Day 38…sorry.  Technically, that was Sunday.  We got home two days ago and have been busy ever since for a very special reason.  Today IS, however, the eight year anniversary of the day Matthew and I met.  Awww.

Backing up…Saturday night was a late night continuing to help our friends move into their house.  Sunday morning, not wanting to stress Levi by waking him too early, Matthew and Amelia went to church while Levi was allowed to sleep in and I packed our things and got ready to leave.  By early afternoon we drove out of Walla Walla and made our very first non-stop drive over four hours!  Ironic!  But, we flew (metaphorically) through the mountain passes (which had been closed the day before when a storm blew in) and enjoyed familiar roads.  We did not, and have not, enjoyed the gray.  We had only ONE day of rain on our entire five week trip (thanks, Tennessee!) and a few snow days…the rest were beautifully sunny and even warm in a few places.  The gray here is…sad.

Sunday evening Matthew headed over to hang out with his brother for the last time for a long time.  He is joining the military and left early this morning, so we wanted to be sure we had time to say goodbye.  Yesterday we were all there helping him pack his things and letting the kids hang out with their uncle.  It was a nice goodbye and we wish him success!

Today is our first day back at “work” and we have been fairly productive, despite two needy children.  I managed to sort five weeks’ worth of mail and Matthew filed our taxes.  Yay for a significant refund (thanks Amelia)!  We were so blessed to learn that the remaining balance for our travel doctor visits had been forgiven after we applied for financial aid.  Praise the Lord!  We have quite a few more administrative projects to accomplish, as is the nature of living overseas, but we still have time.

Even though it took me this long to update our blog (sorry!), I have written a few other informative posts that you can look forward to in the coming days.  There are a lot of unanswered questions about our journey, and we would like to take the time to answer them thoughtfully.  If you have any, just drop us a note or a comment!

So, the road trip is done – and you’ve loved following along right?  The purpose of the trip was to raise support, both prayer and financial, from people around the country.  We looked at our list of people receiving our prayer letters each month and realized that half of them were scattered – why not go out to share with them in person?  So we did and we think it was a wonderful success!  To have people joining our mission team from all over is such a blessing.  And we met so many new people!  We love knowing that so many of you, who we couldn’t see on this trip, were following along, praying for our safety and that our mission to help the people of the DRC would be heard by people who would want to partner with us.  If you’ve been following along, I challenge you to consider partnering with us as well!  If you feel the Lord is leading you to support our little family and our huge move to Africa, please do so!  We would love to hear from you as you pray for us or tell someone about our adventure!  We love being encouraged by hearing from you.  Help us keep the momentum we had on our road trip going, won’t you?

Road trip: done.